On Saturday, December 18, 2004, at 06:55 PM, Greeniegirl2 at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 12/18/2004 10:16:42 AM Central Standard Time,
>rosieburroughs at yahoo.com writes:
>> Mine was a boarding school at which the boarders had no access to
> computers outside school hours. I don't mean that Latin is not useful -
> I'm glad I did it - but my IT skills, such as they are, have been
> acquired piecemeal and on the job. I am now finding that many employers
> want bits of paper to "prove" one knows how to use Word or whatever.
>> Rosie
>> I can't imagine having to teach myself a lot about computers
> because at school they started us learning to type at around 11 years
> old and we have to take computer classes in middle and high school. I
> love making fun of my dad because he does the whole typing with two
> fingers searching for the letters thing. It becomes very frusterating
> to watch though. Actually, this year my school is trying this new
> thing some of the other schools have tried where all the freshmen (9th
> graders) had to get laptops and they use them to take notes on and do
> other things with. They also are trying to get the majority of the
> textbooks on CDs to go along with the laptops. I'm not really sure how
> it's going but from what I've seen it looks like a pain to have to
> carry them everywhere and all the kids just play Halo or Tetris during
> class, though I hear the teachers are getting really good at knowing
> when they are doing this or not. They are also expensive too.
> -Jordan
Oh, my goodness. How times change.
Now when _I_ was in school -- even when I was at university -- there
was no such thing as a personal computer. We didn't even have
hand-held calculators, if you can imagine; we used slide rules.
In fact, I still have my slide rule somewhere in a box. About 1984
my friend was a teaching assistant for a class that all the engineering
students had to take. It was on the social
impact of technology. I remember they had a section on the Bomb
and a section on the automobile. [This was in Detroit, so the
automobile
was particularly apt.] In any case, at one point, she borrowed my
slide rule to take in and show her students. They were awed.
"People really _calculated_ with those?!"
As for typing, I finally broke down when I was 26 and learned touch-
typing because I needed a job and jobs for women who could type
paid better. So when I _did_ meet up with computers, I was prepared.
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